Coming to the constructivist theory its merit is it is from with in the individual, and hence effective. But, every individual is capable of constructing knowledge for him self from his own experiences and thinking?
According to the normal distribution what percentage of pupil could do?
I remember my mathemtics teacher in class ix who used to say: In this class leave the students who pass on thier own, and I see some require a just a jakee to get them pass, some others require a ‘lift’ i.e., say just 4-5 marks to make-up for their pass, while a majority of them require a ‘CRANE’ to lift them from fail to pass. This is to demonstrate ‘individual differences’.
I quote Jerome Bruner who while defining individual differences, he said, ‘what one person can learn in this world could be learnt by one and all, but with a difference of time’.
This time reference is very important. The middle 68% pupil require a considerable time, while the above normal pupil require less time, and the below normal can take 10 years what the normal could do in one year, and the ab-average in one month. So, the first two categories require a back-up or push in learning. Vygostky call the pusher as ‘More Knowledgeble other’, Maslow called the person as ‘Helper’, Bruner called him as ‘Culturally Matrured’ and so on.

But, learning for him self is an utopian thinking. Ideally, every country is expected to be ‘independent’ by constructinging its own resources, but is it possible? An ideal dochotomy of dependency and independency never exist. So also, constructing their knowledge by the learner. A push by a matured one saves the unnessary trial-and-error learning as Bandura shows model to do the job in his obseravtion and imitation learning.
If every learner has to learn from scrap by his own where would have been the science to day? We build the science on the foot-prints.

In the Classical Indian Philosophy there is a learning theory viz. ‘Learning by Verbal Testimony’ developed some centuries back. They did a lot of research and developed it. Though much work has been done in the Western Philosophy,on TESTIMONY, no attempt is made in the Western Psychology and Education till 1992. Professor Subbarayan Peri, the author of this comment published a book by name, “Learning by Verbal Testimony” as the poineering attempt. It is at the conceptual level. The Andhra University, India awrded higher doctorate (D.Litt) degree for this work. Professor Harris from Harvard has been working empirically on this learning and published “Trust in Testimony” in 2004. Since then he has been working on Learning by Listening with Testimony. Prof. Peri has been doing longitudinal studies since 20 years. According to Prof. Peri:

Statement of LVT: Words of trust-worthy person inculcate learning among individuals.

Process: The assertative sentences cause learning. Especially, the sentences with injnctive mood verbs by the principle of ‘Psycho-linguistic conditioning’is responsible for such learning.

Applications: In all walks of life;Education, Psycho-therapy, Industry, Child rareering practices et. hoc.

Specialized fields: In the learning of the affective domain like interests, attitudes, emotions etc.

Advantages: The learning which are impossible by other theories the LVT works. Example- we learn our father by the testimony of the mother alone, not by trail-and-error, conditioning, drive, insight, imitation, intuition and so on.

The trust-worthy person is one whome Vygotsky calls as MKO and Maslow calls as Helper.

The LVT is highly humanistic in nature with in-built sympothy and empathy between the teacher and the taught.
Had LVT not there been the science would not have developed as on date. Every intelligent learner start from scrap to invent him self like Newton.
As a matter of how many Newtons are there in the history of Man-kind?

So all learning theories have their advantages and disadvantages. It is up to the learner to decide the strategy of learning, if he couldn’t by the TWP/MKO/HELPER.

An integration of the availble learning theories is the task before the Educationists, and Psychologists. They fail to prescribe a learning strategy for a given individual, for a given learning task, and conditions. The pitiable thing is: entire sciences of Edication and Psychology are based on a single concept,’Individual Differences’, but they forget this concept and propose hundreds of learning theories and claim so and so learning theory is the best.

Let us hope that the Educationists and Psychologists come to the level of prediction and control of learning theories and prescibe a suitable learning strategy for a given individual, for a given learning task, under a given set of conditions. Let them work more on ‘Computational Models of Learning Theories’.

Thaniking you,
Prof. PERI.

Pls, one more thing: How can this theory be applied with students in Distance Learning Programmes?

In an attempt to apply Constructivist theory, will it be correct to use e-mail service as one of the media to improve academic performance among students of National Teachers’ Institute?